


After

by BadTakesJake



Category: Gone Series - Michael Grant
Genre: Canon Continuation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 06:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadTakesJake/pseuds/BadTakesJake
Summary: A short - and very messy - story I wrote about the conclusion of Hero. [Major Spoilers]
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	After

Simone Markovic glances down at the Rockborn Gang that spread out below her. Their group of ten were given a new residence - their lair, as Cruz had said - but were now faced with their greatest conflict. Some of them had survived the Perdido Beach Anomaly, the dome that trapped hundreds of children within the town of Perdido Beach for over a year, and they've all managed to survive the battles that have come since. Just DeVeere, the twisted artist-turned-supervillain calling himself Knightmare. Tom Peaks, the fiery beast dubbed Napalm (or Dragon, no one ever settled on one name). Dillon Poe, the FAYZ survivor who gained the ability to bend the wills of others to his whims. Vincent Vu, the giant starfish who claims to be the reincarnation of Abaddon. And most recently, the cloud of deadly bugs calling himself Vector. Vector in particular is one supervillain that will never leave Simone's mind. He was a monster, a power-hungry fool bent on conquering America, but at one point he had been Simone's father. She may not have wanted to put up with him whenever they were forced together during the weekends, but there was still a familiar love that hung between them.

But now, Simone thinks. The Dark Watchers, the silent minds that peered into their souls whenever the Rockborn were in morph - they were the 'evil' ones. The others went mad thanks to the power bestowed upon them, but the Dark Watchers were the ones who granted them. Or, more accurately, built the world that allowed them to exist. The Rockborn Gang, they had learned something that they now wish they hadn't: the world was a simulation. It wasn't The Matrix, humans weren't being used as batteries to power a computer. No, they were all literally just clouds of code. Ones and zeroes pretending to be humans. Humans with dreams, ideals, opinions. All of them fake.

Perhaps not 'fake', Simone realizes. But not truly 'real' either.

She glances over to where Shade Darby and Malik Tenerife had been embracing earlier, but now only the former remains. This revelation was impactful for all ten people in the room, but Simone knew those two lovers must have taken the news especially harsh. After all, if the things Malik and Francis Specter learned could be considered truth, the two of them were responsible for the creation of their world.

But not the two of them specifically.

Simone's mind spun. She'd dropped her slip into the basket not too long after Dekka Talent gave them the deadline of midnight and taken refuge in the rafters of the control room the group now occupies. She'd flown up onto a pipe using her ability to shapeshift into a bee-like creature, and now, in her human form, looks down from her perch on a pipe.

If her world was a simulation... so what? Could they go on living the same lives they had - as chaotic as they were? Even if their lives were artificial, they were still lives. Some people believed a god was controlling everything that happened with his red strings of fate, how is that any different than a computer generating every possibility? They still had free will - or whatever passed for it in this crazy world of their's; Simone pinched herself to prove that fact.

She had a flurry of questions, and there were a couple big ones on her mind. Sure, they were being beaten around like bumper cars by her other thoughts, but she tried clinging onto them.

Maybe it was denial.

Malik and Shade had stopped talking. What they said was meaningless in the grand scheme of things anyway. The two of them, they spoke not to converse or trade thoughts. No, the reason they conversed was to distract them from their decision.

He'd excused himself, pushing away from his ex-girlfriend (current girlfriend? Does that really matter now?) in order to dwell on his own thoughts in silence. Now, Malik just stared at the basket across the room. It was a black hole - quite literally, the fate of the world rested on the words written on the slips of paper sat within it. Malik chuckled wryly, thinking about the irony.

"None of us wanted this." Sam had said before. Sam was famous, the hero of the FAYZ, the one who kept all the kids together throughout the events that plagued the Perdido Beach kids. But now, Malik realized how ironic it was. Of course, the ten of them didn't want to be the ones forced to make this decision, but they chose to anyway. He and Francis didn't need to reveal the truth. They wouldn't have even known the truth if not for Malik's curiosity.

Malik felt the probing eyes of the Dark Watchers, of the him that created the world. They never left his mind, not since he'd been burned in the devilishly hot fires produced by Tom Peaks. And he wondered: what is the other Malik, the REAL Malik, thinking about their plight.

He clenched his fist and pulled out his phone.

11:59

A solemn and serious air hung over the ten members of the Rockborn Gang, but they were not the only ones whose minds were running at a million miles an hour. Dr. Malik Tenerife, who watched the scene from the theatre behind his artificial self's eyes, was likewise very much conflicted.

Dr. Tenerife rubs his temples. He was angry, somewhat, but more so he was confused. When Malik and Francis entered the white room, they did technically meet Dr. Tenerife and he did technically tell the truth. They spoke to the physical manifestation of Dr. Tenerife's imported memories, who could not leave the room leftover from the CPU's early development. But that part of the code should have long since been deleted. After Pete Ellison had found his way into that testing room, Dr. Tenerife knew that the CPU had automatically patched itself and removed all access to that area. The dimension that existed outside of the simulation too should have been inaccessible.

The doctor sighs and looks around his lab. It was midnight so he was all alone, save for the world that existed within the computer at the centre of the room. He looked back to the scene playing out in front of him, the ten teenagers all voting about the future of the world. But, if they voted to end the simulation? Could the AI that ran their world even shut it down? Commit suicide?

Could he?

Dr. Tenerife was a proud man. The Advanced Simulation Organism was his greatest creation, one of the highest technical achievements in the history of humanity. For all intents and purposes, the AI he crafted was alive in ways even he wasn't. Could he kill it? Would it even work?

A hundred monitors splay out in a spider web in front of him, showing the perspectives of the world within from the perspectives of every Rockborn in morph. That world, HIS world, was in chaos, he knew that, but did it truly matter to him? He'd struggled with the idea that he himself existed within a simulation before. Dr. Tenerife had written a number of papers on the idea of his reality being an artificial one, and the Advanced Simulation Organism was born from his research into the subject. There were far too many coincidences within the laws of reality, too many happy accidents. Just with the existence of humanity itself, the chances of a planet being positioned just the right distance from the sun, with water and an atmosphere capable of supporting life? That alone had a slim chance of existing. It felt staged, planned.

The doctor's vision lasered in on the main screen, the largest one that sat in the centre of the collage, the one consistently showing the view from behind Malik Tenerife's eyes. He saw nine Rockborn teenagers staring at a crumple of folded paper slips on the long rectangular table at which they all sat.

"So, what will happen next?" Dr. Tenerife asks, both to himself and no one as the characters in front of him come to a decision.

About an hour later, the Malik and Francis of the simulation returned to the white room beyond the confines of their reality. Dr. Tenerife, the form created from his digitized memories, stands in front of him, fingers tangled like a tumbleweed. "You've returned." To Francis, the voice was chilling. It was entirely familiar, a voice she'd heard many times, and yet all too unfamiliar as well. The doctor's simple words cause her body to stiffen in fear.

"I assume you saw it all?" Malik responds, tapping his forehead twice. He's been forced to live with the sensation of his older self peeping through his mind ever since he gained the ability to morph. Francis was lucky, she never felt the Dark Watchers' prying eyes, so she couldn't even begin to imagine how it must feel being spied on like that.

The other Malik, the 'real' one, cocks a sad, but knowing smile. "Indeed. I know all about your vote, and the outcome of it. I must say, I am quite surprised."

Ten votes, ten pieces of paper. Every single one of them said the same thing: unplug.

They knew it was wrong to throw away the lives of billions of people. Even if they were just in a simulation, to them it was still the reality they had all known since their births (or whatever passed as such). But at the same time, they couldn't face away from the truth: their world was ending. The ASO rocks that fell from the sky brought them a dangerous plague, a plague of chaos and power. Francis knew that, should their world continue on, they would still have to face the supervillains born from the rock's gift. The governments seem paralyzed in the face of Rockborn - they were powerless to stop Vector, and there's no guarantee he was completely killed. The ten members of the Rockborn Gang were, so far, the only ones willing and able to stand up against their monstrous foes. More would come, surely, but how long would that take?

Malik, Francis' Malik, puts his hand on her shoulder. "Would you mind going back to the others?" he whispers. Francis could see a myriad of emotions behind the boy's eyes - fear, anger, confusion - but she didn't feel any different. So she nodded a sad nod.

As her body began evaporating, transforming into the rainbow form that allows her to break through reality itself, Francis smiles to the boy beside her. "It's been nice knowing you."

The white room disappearing around her, Francis finds herself floating in the void that is the n-Dimension. Though her body is broken up in this plane of existence, not to mention a rainbow spectre, she finds herself unable to do anything. Floating outside of reality, Francis curls herself into a ball and cries.

"'Unplug' from the system and kill billions of people." Dr. Tenerife starts. "That is something I could never do. Nor did I believe you all could do the same."

Malik had seen Sam's face. Over forty people had died as he used his new power to kill Vector. So many deaths, including every hostage the bug man had held captive on the train with him. There was a sadness, one of true despair, behind Sam's face after he learned that. A similar look flashed behind Shade's eyes from time to time too, Malik noted, thinking about how it was technically her fault that Malik and Cruz had been dragged into the mess they now find themselves. "Truthfully, I didn't expect this outcome either." Malik answers honestly, something that somewhat surprises him, before continuing. "Personally, I voted to unplug just to see what you would do."

The teenage boy lowers his gaze, glaring not at Dr. Tenerife, but through him. The doctor merely stands, as calm and cool as he had been before. "So, you did figure it out."

His stare tearing a whole into the person claiming to be an alternate - a 'real' - version of himself, Malik begins speaking once more. "You meeting me here. It was a shock to learn the truth, for sure, but something about it felt wrong. Then I remembered how you mentioned you couldn't alter the code of this program you created, which made me ask: how did we then meet?

"If I'm a mannequin built from a bunch of ones and zeroes and you a real live human being, we should not be able to meet face-to-face like this. Which brought me to two conclusions. One: you're merely an avatar for the AI god that controls us. Or, two: the world you inhabit is itself a simulation."

"Two interesting proposals. I knew it would be an interesting time, meeting myself."

In response, Malik simply holds up his finger. "Either way, you should still be considered as 'real' as any of us Rockborn."

With Malik's shout, the doctor's eyes go wide as he garners the truth behind those words. The doctor throws his hands up, wanting to protect himself from the incoming volley he believes is coming, but Malik's power does not require him to even move. And he doesn't. Focusing on the doctor, Malik activates the gift granted to him by the ASO he was fed, the one that saved his life: the ability to bombard the minds of others with the pain his real body is forced to suffer eternally.

A mental click ticks through Malik's brain, a switch flipping. It takes but a second later for the doctor in front of him to collapse to the ground, his hands grasping for his head as his lungs let out whatever oxygen they carried in a feral, gutteral scream.

Malik just watches the man suffer. He has no idea which of his theories are correct, but right now it didn't matter. Acting in a blind rage, the teenage boy lunges his body at the doctor clinging to sanity as pain explodes through his mind, and grasps his neck. The doctor gasps, wheezes as he tries to suck in air from the throat now held in a vice by Malik. "Tell me the truth!" he yells att the doctor. Unfortunately, even without being able to speak, the doctor denies with the lightest shake of his head.

"So be it." The final words to ring out into the white room, followed by the powerful crack of Malik's knuckles impacting on the doctor's nose.

The real Dr. Tenerife, the one watching the events of the white room unfold on a monitor, gasps. He had had no expectations for this meeting, he had no idea what Malik had been thinking asking Francis to leave, but now he knew. He didn't want her to watch as he beat down on his doppelgänger. It was brutal and shocking, yet Dr. Tenerife felt like it was also poetic in a strange way.

He knew the version of him he saw on the screen getting pummelled wasn't yet dead, but he had no idea what would happen once his lights get shattered. Dr. Tenerife had uploaded his memories into an AI long before it created its own reality, and with how the CPU managed itself he had put no thought into what would happen should that version of him disappear. People could die in that universe, he'd seen that many times as he watched over the FAYZ like it was a deranged dollhouse, and theoretical the avatar of himself could too.

Dr. Tenerife sits on the edge of his seat. He thinksvaguely, that he had to be unhinged, toying with the lives of others - digital lives, but still lives - as if they were pawns in a game of chess, but he was a scientist. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back - his curiosity may destroy his creation but it could further his research in other ways.

On the screen, he watched the movie unfold. Malik's feral carnage destroying the body in front of him. It was horrific, but not something unfamiliar after all the destruction he'd seen in this world. The boy's wild flurry of punching again and again into his own face, teeth falling out as blood dribbled from the doctor's nose. With every impact Malik shouted, demanding the truth, but the scientist's lips remain sealed and cemented over. He had no intention of speaking - like himself, the one who watched from beyond, he must have been curious as to what would happen to the world once he met his demise.

It didn't take much longer. As Dr. Tenerife's face melted into a bloody pulp, the white room slowly turned into a red one.

And then, the screen turned off. Then another one went black. And another, and another.

It took three minutes for Malik to beat the digital avatar of Dr. Tenerife to death, and three seconds for the world to shut down.

But the world had not fully ended, not from Malik's point of view. The man who created him was dead, but his mind was still rushing faster than an F-1 racer. Malik throws the corpse of himself down to the ground, and turns his back to it.

"What the fuck have I done?"

He had acted in anger, in confusion. He had so many questions, so many demands, but he just couldn't hold it in anymore. All of the chaos he'd had to deal with since the ASO meteors began raining from the sky, and now the revelation that his world wasn't real. It all cumulated into destruction.

Malik looks around. He did not expect that killing the man would have any impact on the simulation in which he lived, so why did he feel disappointed?

Not to mention, he was now trapped in a prison. Malik sighed. For all he knew, the world did end. Perhaps this room exists outside the simulation itself and destroying the creator had no affect on this room specifically as the world outside collapsed.

With only the bloody corpse of himself to keep him company, Malik finally realized something.

The Dark Watchers that haunted him, the ones always creeping through the crevices of his mind, finally disappeared.

He may have been trapped in the white room, the prison of his own creation, but Malik Tenerife was finally free.

On a sunny day, in a small building by the beach, Sam Temple sits witth unfocused eyes. His mind was aflutter. In the deepest recesses of his brain, memories and knowledge were flying about just out of the reach of Sam's consciousness.

He had the lingering feeling, like he was forgetting something important. Thoughts and ideas skitter about his mind like spiders, clinging to invisible webs that seem to have been severed.

While a battle raged in his mind, his brain trying to remember something it couldn't, Sam simply just stared off into space. He pictured the same dreamscape he had visited a million times before, where he sits on the rough waters of the beach. A surfboard beneath him on a nice sunny day, his best friend Quinn by his side. Two surfers with nothing but their boards, no cares or worries. Peace.

And then, a click.

A soft click, but a click nonetheless.

This click rattles through Sam's mind, pushing whatever thoughts may have been out of reach deeper into the nooks and crannies of the storage room within his brain, cutting through the fantasy he so often dreamt about. His mind, only a second before rattling with confused outrage and a lust for the excitement of surfing, was clear. Anything invading his thoughts was gone.

No poof, no flash of light, no explosion. Just a clean wipe, as if they had never been there to begin with.

Sam, coming to his senses, finally remembered where he was. He sits now at a small, cramped desk, one oh-so-familiar to him.

It was third period, history class.

But his teacher was nowhere to be seen. One minute Mr. Trentlake had been standing up at the front of the class, lecturing his students about who-knows-what, the next minute...?

A moment of shock grips Sam's body, but he shakes it off. Turning to the girl who sits to his left, a kind girl named Mary Terrafino, he leans over and whispers a single question to her.

"You saw that, right?"


End file.
